Back in late fall/early winter, I decided to enter WWWF in two different independent publishing/self-pub awards contests. I had done the same for The Golden Orb after it had been published in 2014, and though it never won anything, I did receive some encouraging comments from one of the judges.

The organizers of the first contest to which WWWF was entered sent me a nice email stating it had not won anything, but the judges’ comments would be sent to me soon. Imagine, then, my surprise when I received the email from Jim Barnes, the Managing Editor and Awards Director of IndependentPublisher.com, congratulating me on being an IPPY medalist!

When We Were Forgotten was a difficult book to write for so many reasons. I’m proud of myself for listening to my gut as well as my amazing editors and beta readers and finishing it when I did. Everyday, we’re bombarded with news about the world and the environment, making my little story ever more relevant to our lives. I hope it continues to touch readers as it seems to have touched the judges who deemed it worthy of this medal.

I am honored and humbled. Thank you to everyone who has read my work and supported me through this difficult and awesome adventure called writing. I truly appreciate each and every one of you.

Now, I’m off to enjoy my tiny bit of celebrity. Look for an announcement soon on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram about a new free promotion on Amazon of the WWWF e-book. Because giving my story away for free (for a week) is how I plan on continuing the celebration!

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I’ve created a giveaway on Goodreads for “When We Were Forgotten” which starts today and runs until October 26, 2017. (You must be in the United States or Canada to enter.) It’s free to enter and there are no strings attached besides being a Goodreads member. Just click on the links below for a chance to win one (1) of ten (10) autographed paperback editions of my new science fiction novel. And please share with your friends and family!

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I’m happy to announce that my new science fiction novel, When We Were Forgotten, will be released on September 30, 2017. Just five days away! Eek!

Because I’m a woman who dares to have ideas on the Internet and because my new book wrestles with certain subject matters (climate change, reproductive rights, religious freedom), I feel it’s important to establish some ground rules for engaging on my blog from here on out.

1. Let’s talk! If you come here because you’ve read the book and want to discuss it, please do so. I’m all ears. I’d love to know what you thought of the characters, the setting, the themes, etc. If you have questions, please ask. If you have concerns, please share them. If you didn’t like the book, that’s fine. It’s not for everyone. Regardless, I’m happy to have a civil, respectful conversation with anyone who reads my words and wants to delve a little deeper into my book’s world. (By the way, thank you for reading the book. I really do appreciate it.)

2. The use of racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and other intolerant language will be cause for me to completely disengage with you. You have a viewpoint? Fine. Talk to me like we’re both human beings just trying to figure out this crazy world together. Better yet, talk to me like I’m a respected adult in your life. If you use any type of offensive and/or threatening language to try to get your viewpoint across, that’s NOT a viewpoint. That’s ABUSE. Abuse will not be tolerated here.

3. If you come here to taunt me just because I am a woman who dares to have ideas–especially if you have no intention of ever reading my book–I will ask you to kindly leave. If you don’t like someone like me invading your space, then don’t come here to invade mine.

4. Threats of physical harm to me or to members of my family, whether through comments here or through other forms of communication, will cause me to seek out the appropriate authorities. Please think about what you plan to leave behind before you leave it.

5. My book is a work of fiction. The story is made up and the cast of characters is diverse for a reason, which means the viewpoints of some of my characters may not be viewpoints I personally espouse. That should go without saying, but it’s like getting mad at an actor for something his character did in a show, when the actor’s just playing a part someone else wrote. Not every character in my book is going to believe everything I believe or think exactly the way I do. If they did, there would be no conflict, which would make for a pretty boring story.

6. Finally, please enjoy the book! It took over three years to write and lots of research on a variety of subjects. It is not perfect by any means, so please forgive me for any egregious errors I may have made while writing it. I’m only human. I make mistakes. Feel free to point them out to me in a respectful manner. I’ll take constructive criticism as graciously as I can, and then we can move on to something else. Because at the end of the day, it’s just a story.

Thanks for keeping these rules in mind and making my little corner of the Internet a civil space for everyone to enjoy.

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The summer has flown by and autumn is almost here. Our annual family vacation to South Carolina happened in July, my oldest son turned 11 years old (!) at the beginning of August, school started for both my boys, and both Gen Con 50 and an eclipse happened. It’s taken me several days of getting back into the swing of things (and getting over con crud, which I seem to still have) to feel like writing anything of worth.

Really, this is just an update to let you know I’m still alive, as these things tend to go anymore. I will say that I received my copyeditor’s notes right before we went on vacation in July and worked on my last round of revisions and fixes as soon as we got home. It took me about a month, which is the fastest I’ve ever revised a full-length novel before. My copyeditor now has the final draft of When We Were Forgotten in her capable hands. Once she’s finished working her editorial magic, I’ll get to work on the interior layout, pick a trim size for the printed book, and upload the mf-er to CreateSpace.

At Gen Con, a well known fantasy author advised me to check out a certain publishing house that likes feminist science fiction. I’ve thought about submitting my manuscript to them, but after three and a half years of working on the story, I just want to get it out to all you lovely readers. I’m tired of waiting on other people to tell me it’s not what they’re looking for at this time, and I’m not ready for someone to say, “We like it, but it needs this and this and this before we’re willing to publish it.” Plus, I love the cover my friend, Devin Night, did for me. So, look for the print version of the novel to be published within the next month or so. EEEEKKK!

I think a round of pictures taken at Gen Con would be the best way to liven up this post. Here ya go:

My version of Castiel from “Supernatural” was well received on the Friday of the con, and my friends and I had so much fun cosplaying the Scooby Gang in Victorian/Steampunk fashion on Saturday (I was Daphne, swathed in so much purple satin). I also spent four hours on Friday playing one of my favorite games (Marrying Mr. Darcy) with one of my favorite authors (Mary Robinette Kowal) for charity (Worldbuilders). All in all, it was the best Gen Con experience I’ve ever had . . . and not just because of the awesome costumes this year.

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Wow. It’s June. We’re halfway through 2017 already, and I haven’t been on the old blog in almost six months. So, what’s been happening in my little corner of the world?

The biggest news I can share is my science fiction novel – the one I’ve been working on for the past three years and counting – will not be traditionally published. On May 30, I received a rejection letter from the publisher I submitted my manuscript to way back in January. They said my novel is not right for them at this time. I’m both disappointed and relieved. This means I can self-publish as I had originally planned, and I won’t have to change a thing (except grammar mistakes) because the subject matter might not “be right” for the publisher’s audience. I’m currently waiting to hear back from a copy editor. Once the manuscript is polished and to my liking, the final book will be released into the wild. Hopefully, it’ll be done by the end of the summer, but that will depend on copy editing, formatting, and uploading everything to CreateSpace/Amazon.

Another big thing: my husband and I bought ten acres of land at the end of March. It’s a beautiful lot that backs up to a development, and it’s all forested, which means, once our new house is built, we’ll feel like we’re living in the middle of nowhere while still being a few minutes from our closest neighbors and the rest of civilization. We’ve already chosen the building site – in front of a lovely limestone ravine – and yesterday, we met with our builder and a draftsman to start working on house plans. This is a huge adventure for us, one I wasn’t sure we’d ever experience. It’s been fun, so far, with only a few minor hurdles to jump. We’ll see if it’s just as fun a year or so from now when we’re waist deep in construction. In the meantime, this is what we get to look at when we visit:

Besides not being traditionally published, my only other disappointment for the year is we’re not going to Great Britain for my birthday. The new property took a large chunk of our savings, and although we could still make the trip, I’d rather save the money and use it toward the new house. Plus, there’s a lot of uncertainty around relations between the United States and Europe. I’m not sure it’s the right time to be crossing the big pond. One day, we will cross it, and it will be glorious.

We may not be going to England, but 2017 will still be the Year of Travel. My family and I already spent Spring Break in Washington, DC, as these photos will attest:

And in a couple of weekends, we’ll be back in DC to celebrate a cousin’s high school graduation. Next weekend is Creation Entertainment’s Once Upon A Time Convention in Chicago. Two of my best girlfriends and I will be attending the con together for a moms’ weekend away, cosplaying as Snow White, Regina, and Belle from the show. There will be panels and photo ops with the show’s cast. It’s going to be epic. And, of course, we have our annual family trip to Charleston, South Carolina in July.

Oh, I almost forgot. We got a new dog.

Our poor little hamster, Skye, passed away the day we closed on the new land. The boys were devastated and immediately wanted a new pet. Since we’d been talking about getting them a dog for a long time, we decided to take a look at our local animal shelter. There’d been no plans to bring home a puppy right away, but it just so happened little Chewie was at the shelter waiting to be loved. He’s a Chihuahua/miniature pinscher mix, eight months old, and feisty. I’ll be enrolling him in puppy school soon.

I think that catches you all up to what’s been happening at Chez Cook since January. Despite looking forward to some relaxation, it’s still going to be a very busy summer for me. I recently joined a local chapter of NOW (National Organization for Women) and hope to steer some of my frustrated-with-world-events energy into supporting causes dear to me, like reproductive justice. I’ll also be more involved in my sons’ school starting in the fall as I step into the role of vice president of the board of directors. And there will be Gen Con in August, and more sewing and writing throughout the rest of the year. Lots and lots of both, I hope. Perhaps more of the Golden Orb prequels will make their way onto the blog soon. I’ve been shopping them with my new writing group, and they’ve been well received.

But for now, I must go, because there’s a child’s birthday party and a high school graduation party to attend simultaneously. Fun times, ahead!

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It’s January 12, 2017. A new month. A new year. And what have I been up to lately? Here’s a handy list:

Not long after my last post, I decided to quit Facebook. I’ve dropped in occasionally over the past week, but I’m still not on it a lot. It was a good decision to quit at the time. My levels of stress, depression, and anxiety diminished considerably without it in my life. Quitting had a lot to do with the presidential election and some of the incredible stuff showing up in my timeline. All the anger and sadness and fear on one side and the victorious smugness on the other. I couldn’t handle it, so I became a snail, curled into my own little shell. It was nice. It still is. I’m keeping up with things, but in my own way. Okay, mostly through Twitter, but that site doesn’t seem to affect me the same way Facebook does/did.

I had two suspicious moles removed in December, one on my arm, the other on my collarbone. Tests on both came back benign. Whew.

Back in October, I saw my obstetrician to have my Mirena (an intrauterine device, or IUD) removed. My husband and I are done with having kids and have taken the proper steps to make that choice permanent. However, the Mirena has been so convenient over the years. While on it, I never had to remember to take a pill every morning. I stopped having monthly cycles. There was zero cramping or stress about remembering to have pads in my purse. Truly, it was a dream. I had one inserted after my first son in 2006; it was easily removed in the office a few years later, so I could have my second son in 2010. I had another Mirena inserted soon after he was born. Although FDA recommendations may be changing as I write this, when my second IUD was put in, I was told it should come out in five to six years, when a new one could be inserted if I wanted. It’s been over six years. I saw my OB in October, and she tried to remove it in the office. Standard procedure, but it didn’t happen as it should have. The little piece of plastic had embedded itself in my uterus and just didn’t want to come out. Afterward, I spent some time waffling between going back into the office to try to have it removed in a slightly different way (with no guarantee it would come out and enduring more pain in the process), or just putting me under with general anesthesia in the hospital, hoping my body will relax enough to release it from my uterine lining. I chose the latter. The procedure happened this past Monday. It was outpatient, fairly quick, no pain at all, and I was told the IUD came right out. I’m glad I did it. Will I get another Mirena? We’ll see. Maybe having a monthly cycle again will nudge me in that direction, because it was so convenient before.

The holidays came and went. We ended up staying home on Thanksgiving, because my poor husband got sick and my van needed a piston repaired. On the other hand, Christmas 2016 was probably the least stressful holiday I’ve ever experienced, and that’s saying something. We managed to see almost all our family in the span of two weekends. There was some traveling involved, but we also had family at our house on the holiday, which was nice. We invited friends over for our annual New Year’s Eve gaming party. Lots of party games were played that evening, and we managed to extend the party (after everyone got some sleep) into the following day.

I was invited to join a new writing group. It’s small, and I’ve attended two meetings so far. Everyone is lovely. They even liked the short story (one of the Golden Orb prequels) I shared with them, which I hadn’t touched since 2014. Which leads into:

BIGGEST NEWS EVER: I AM DONE WITH REVISIONS. Let me scream that aloud again, in case you didn’t hear it right. I AM DONE WITH REVISIONS ON When We Were Forgotten! (Also, see image above.) It took me a long time to finish this last round of edits. I had several moments of doubt, of wanting to bang my head against a wall trying to get the ideas to come together, of wanting to just quit. With help from both my editor’s notes and a friend of mine who had great ideas regarding certain technology in the story, I was able to finish … the day before I had my outpatient procedure (#4 above). Because, I thought, if I’m going to go under for this procedure, I should probably have the book done the way I want it. That way, if something should happen to me, I’d have one less thing to worry about. It can be published in it’s current form, and I’d be content. A bit too morbid, perhaps? Perhaps, but I’m sure I’m not the only writer who’s had thoughts like that. Which leads into:

The book will be published some time this year, hopefully within the next six months. I’ve been thinking about finding a copy editor to make certain it’s polished. I already have a cover, so once it’s exactly as I want it, I’ll go through the whole Createspace publishing process. I have a friend who can do the ebook formatting for me, so it’ll probably be in print version first. Or I may wait until she’s done, so I can release it in all formats at once. I had the thought throughout the revision process of querying agents to shop the book around to more traditional publishers, but … eh. I think I just want to get it out into the world. It’s taken three years, off and on, to write. I don’t want it to take three more years to be read by people other than me and my editor and my beta readers. In the meantime:

I have several short stories to revise and post here on the old blog. One should be up soon, so look for that.

Cosplay ideas for Gen Con 2017 are coming along nicely. Pattern drafting may be involved this year. My Evil Queen/Regina cosplay from last year will get another wearing at a “Once Upon A Time” Convention in early June, too.

I turn 40 in late June, and the only thing I want for my birthday is to go to Great Britain with my husband. London, actually, and the surrounding areas. Plans are already in the works for that. It’s a big request, but something I’ve always wanted to do.

I’ll continue to work on our school board this year and next. I may even do some volunteering around town or get a part time job when my youngest is in elementary school. Unless this whole writing thing pans out. Who knows?

We may move to a new house this year, or we may buy a lot and start building. It’s all up in the air at the moment. Big changes, though.

And I think that’s it for now. There will be more happening as 2017 rolls along, but that’s the gist of what’s going on in my life. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and are enjoying the beginning of the new year as best you can. Thanks for your continued patience as I slogged through my own writing process. I promise, this will be the year another book comes out! And soon!

I know it’s been a few months since I last updated the old blog. I wanted to send out a quick announcement that the Kindle edition of The Golden Orbis currently FREE at Amazon.com. It’s true! The promotion runs until June 17, 2016, so if you’ve been waiting to get a copy for yourself, now might be a good time to go for it. If you already own it, thanks! Perhaps you can spread the word to your friends and family and let them know about this amazing deal.

In other news, Summer Break officially started at the end of May. The last few months of my boys’ school year were filled with play dates and school board obligations an end of the year frivolity, leaving me little time to get much writing done. My editor sent back her final edits on When We Were Forgotten on Mother’s Day. I’ve managed to squeak out about three hours of revisions since then, but that’s it. Now that the boys are out of school, I’m finding less time (and less motivation) to write. Isn’t it funny? I should have more time during these long, lazy days, but I’ve actually been busier. Or, in reality, I’ve just been letting Mom Guilt take over, forcing myself to stop whatever unimportant thing I’m doing to focus on my kids. It’s been good for all of us, I think.

Last week was a little different, however. From Saturday, June 4, to Wednesday, June 8, I attended the Indiana University Writer’s Conference here in my hometown. It was a new experience for me, both eye-opening and exhausting. I’ve attended writing seminars at Gen Con over the years, and I took a creative writing course in college back in the day, but I’d never spent five consecutive days at an event dedicated solely to the art of writing before last week. It was intense, like being back in school with my pens and notebooks, feverishly taking notes while the lecturer at the front of the class tries to cram his or her area of expertise into a limited amount of time. I learned a lot about myself during those five short days, especially about “Amanda, the Writer.”

Each morning of the conference, I participated in a speculative fiction workshop with eight other people and our workshop leader, the science fiction author Wesley Chu. We critiqued each others’ sci-fi and fantasy manuscripts (I wrote a short story specifically for the workshop) and discussed the business of writing and how to get published. We also spent some time free writing using prompts Wesley gave us. It was nerve wracking having my short story critiqued by people I didn’t know, but they all had great advice and found lots of ways I could improve the manuscript. Many in the group thought I could expand it into a novella or even a novel. Maybe it will be the next thing I work on after I’m finished with When We Were Forgotten.

The afternoons of the conference were spent in classes about prose poetry, essay writing, memoir writing/storytelling, and making accurate word choices. I particularly enjoyed the prose poetry class and the storytelling class. Both gave me the opportunity to write from the heart, something I don’t do anywhere except here on the old blog. Also, both classes were led by such enthusiastic and animated educators, poet Amelia Martens and performer/writer David Crabb. The entire conference itself was a safe space for writers and their craft, so much so that I felt comfortable enough to read aloud one of the poems I wrote during Amelia’s class. It’s an epistle entitled “Dear Joss Whedon”:

Dear Joss Whedon, You are the man to write women, women who can be anything, do anything, feel anything. Your men are just as manly as your women are womanly. Let’s go have a tea together, or perhaps some shawarma. We can talk about what it is to delve into our brains, our souls, our heartbreaks, how we can put them on the page or screen so they’re no longer in the dark but in the open. We can think and feel and talk and be open without worry, without criticism. Just us and the shawarma sellers.

Another poem I’m kind of proud of is one in which Amelia asked us to take a headline or a small phrase from an article and use it as a seed for a poem. There is a sentence in an essay our lecturer on essay writing, Walton Muyumba, had us read that really struck me. The essay, called “The Google Bus” by Rebecca Solnit, begins one paragraph with “Where orchards grew, Apple stands.” I took that line and ran with it:

Where orchards grew, Apple stands. Where a rock once picked from the shore now lives in the water, a mollusk’s shell lays serenely among the grains of sand. Where a forest once canopied the floor, a city smokes and spews and groans. Where a field once knew battle, grass ripples. Headstones sit quietly where a meadow once opened green, waiting. It all waits. Waits until it has nothing to wait for, because there is something else there to sit and wait and live or die.

I love how prose poems can be fun and silly while still diving deep into our minds and souls. They’re powerful stuff, and I may continue to write them over the summer, because they don’t need a lot of time. They’re great for letting the mind wander and the fingers move until words become clear on the page.

I could go on and on about the conference, about how Salvatore Scibona showed us how to pick apart our work at the sentence level, choosing the right words and moving them into the right place for full impact. How Walton Muyumba blew my mind as he discussed various essays and demonstrated what the essay writers were trying to do in their work. How Wesley Chu spent time breaking down the route to getting traditionally published and encouraged us all to keep writing. How I made new friends and read some amazing pieces in the speculative fiction workshop. How my hands shook as I read a very personal prose poem to a bar full of conference attendees. I could go on and on, but this blog post is long enough as it is. Just know that I had a life-changing experience, and I highly recommend the IU Writers’ Conference (or any conference, really) to anyone who writes. You’ll come away a better writer … and a better person.

That’s it for now. I’ll try to update when I’m close to publishing When We Were Forgotten. My goal of having it done by my birthday is not going to happen, but I’m not worried about it. In fact, I’ve been seriously thinking about shopping the manuscript around with some agents and seeing if it’ll take. If not, I’ll go back to self-publishing it as I had originally planned. In the meantime, I’ll also try to get the rest of The Fae Agent short stories (what I’m calling the stories I wrote as prequels to The Golden Orb) up on the blog.

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Is it really summer? The humidity level says it is, but otherwise, I’m not quite convinced. Our area has had a few spots of blue sky accompanied with the usual summer heat, but for the majority of our waking hours (and many of our sleeping ones), the hills of Indiana have been swathed in gray clouds and rain. Buckets of rain. You’d think we were living in the Tropics. I managed to tame my jungle of a lawn in the few minutes of dryness we experienced yesterday, and it may have been some sort of record for the week, both the amount of sunlight and my race to finish mowing before it started raining again. As I write this, there’s been a break in an hour long downpour, but the timpani beat of thunder continues to rumble in the distance, promising more.

Also, as lazy as I have been in regards to my writing, everything else hasn’t slowed down much. Since last weekend, my husband and I renovated a bathroom in our house (wall paint and vinyl self stick floor tiles are the superheroes of the home improvement arena), and our boys are a bit more knowledgeable in the ways of swimming. They have four more lessons to go, but so far they’re showing amazing progress for their ages and abilities. Between driving them back and forth to the pool and running miscellaneous errands and hosting our weekly board game group one evening and sewing costumes for upcoming conventions, I haven’t exactly been lazy. This has been the first morning that I’ve been able to sit for a long while and catch up on a few Internet things, which is probably why I suddenly felt compelled to write a blog post.

It’s going to be a short(ish) post, because I need to get back to sewing. With a food festival tomorrow, Father’s Day on Sunday, and date night tonight (we’re seeing a local production of “Hairspray”!), there are going to be only so many hours in which I can hole up in our basement and work at my sewing machine — after I play with the boys, of course. So without further ado:

Blog Post, Part the First:

I’d like to direct you to this amazing article on empathy by musician/songwriter/wonder woman Amanda Palmer. Her words stuck in my brain and have not let go. They are reshaping the way I look at conflict.

Which leads into a video I shared on my personal Facebook page this morning about racism in America as it pertains to recent events (with my own text and a link to the video in quotes below):

“Jon [Stewart] always knows what to say, and he says it here brilliantly. And I may get some flack for this, but I’m trying to empathize as much with the young man who committed this heinous act as with the families who were devastated by his act, if only because I do not want to forget that he’s a human being too. A misguided, morally reprehensible human being, but a human nonetheless…just as every other terrorist is on this planet. And when we forget that and scream out for more violence to be perpetrated on them, it doesn’t make us any better than them.
Okay, I’m done.”

Jon Stewart is my spirit animal.

Okay, now I’m done.

Blog Post, Part the Second:

So, that science fiction novel I had been feverishly working on since November and now am slogging through to get revisions done … you know, that one?

It has a cover.

Yes, it’s not even close to being published, but let me say that again.

IT HAS A COVER!

My awesome, amazingly talented friend, Devin Night, who did the cover for The Golden Orb as well as the map of Ouestfold agreed to do a cover for my sci-fi novel, and like him, it is awesomely amazing. (Of course, I may be biased.) He’s given me permission to share it before I publish the novel, so here it is in all its beauty:

I am in awe of how Devin can take the notes I give him on my stories and create images that are much more beautiful than what I see in my head. He may make a few tweaks to the cover to fit the trim size of the finished novel, but otherwise, this is it. Those are my main character’s hands, by the way. What she’s using is a memopad, like a futuristic iPad/tablet. And that logo for the Terran Alliance, my futuristic world government? I gave Devin a single sentence from the novel as well as a few more details describing it. Again, just astounding work. If you like the cover design, you can check out more of Devin’s work at immortalnights.com. He makes digital character tokens and maps for virtual role-playing games (RPGs that you play on your computer), and they’re just as fun to look at as that image above. Hopefully, posting the cover here will motivate me to get down to work myself.

But not now. Now it’s lunchtime for me and the boys. And I have some serious sewing to get done this afternoon. And it’s raining again.

Like this:

Actually, time doesn’t seem to fly when I’m writing because I’m such a slow writer.

Regardless, I’ve been MIA lately because I’ve been busy working on the sci-fi novella I wrote in 2013 and then handed off to an editor earlier this year. The editor, Bree (who is wonderful, by the way), sent back an in depth critique that intimidated me for about a day — enough time for me to see the story that needed to be written. And that story was finally written. It took eight weeks, but it did indeed get written. Now, the manuscript’s back with Bree so she can do her wizardly editing magic. Meanwhile, the first of the short stories I wrote in November as a prequel to The Golden Orb is with the editor for that novel, Holly (who is also wonderful, by the way), so she can do her wizardly editing magic, too. Huzzah for wonderful, brilliant women who help make my stories better!

While words are being read and cut and criticized, I’ve been catching up on other life things, like taking a much needed vacation with my family. The vacation actually happened before the novella rewrites were finished, but it was still much needed. Being forced to be screen-free for a week because of lack of affordable wi-fi and no cell reception did wonders for my head space. I came back home refreshed and ready to finish that novella!

(We went on a Disney cruise, by the way. I highly recommend it if you ever get the chance. Disney knows how to do vacations, especially if they include fabulous food, excellent entertainment, and beautiful beaches.)

One of the few pictures of me from the entire trip, because I’m generally the family photographer.

The other photo taken of me along with my oldest and a certain swaggering pirate. He called me “Love”. Swoon.

My youngest in the ocean. That’s what pure joy looks like.

One of those moments that can only be captured in the morning on a boat in the middle of the ocean.

The other thing that’s taking up my time — besides being a mom and a wife and a friend and helping organize my local moms group and helping at my sons’ school — is my sewing. I just started working on a retro-style dress for a friend, which was put on hold during the novella rewrites. The pattern was chosen because I wanted to challenge myself as a seamstress and see if I could make a garment for someone else without doing a fitting first. Once the dress is done, I’ll move on to a few costumes I’m planning on cosplaying at a couple of conventions. Here’s a sneak peek at two of them:

Can you guess what book/TV series this costume will be based upon? Four words: Scottish historical fantasy romance.

I was so excited to find this vintage suit (from the 40’s) in a thrift store in my hometown. And it fits.

This is going to be worn with the suit above. Can you guess who I’ll be? Hint: a Marvel agent. A bad ass Marvel agent, at that.

So that’s all I have for now. I’ll try to have another update soon on the sci-fi novella and the short stories. The plan is to post the short stories here or on another website in serial form, eventually putting them together in an anthology. As for the sci-fi novella, I hope to self-publish it, but I’m not sure when that will happen. I’m waiting to find out what Bree has to say after she’s done with it and what kind of revisions the manuscript will need. And if I’ll feel confident enough to publish it at all.